When presidential aspirants try to mindlessly out-Trump Trump, it can lead them into ridiculous positions:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is putting a new
twist on the topic of securing the border, a staple among the GOP
candidates running for president, by pointing north.

Walker
said in an interview that aired Sunday that building a wall along the
country's northern border with Canada is a legitimate issue that merits
further review...

Walker said some people in New Hampshire have asked the campaign about the topic.

"They
raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement
folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a
week and a half ago. So that is a legitimate issue for us to look at,"
Walker said.

More details at the StarTribune. I do hope this is the last post I write about Scott Walker.

There has been a lot of media attention to the possible discovery of a Nazi gold train, but this more prosaic discovery also generated a lot of wealth for the finders:

A cache of Atari game cartridges, including
copies of one of the worst video games ever made, have sold for more
then $100,000 (£64,828) after being discovered in a landfill site in the
desert.

The discovery of the games
200 miles south of Albuquerque, New Mexico last year confirmed an urban
legend that Atari had dumped hundreds of games more than 30 years ago
due to poor sales.

Over the last several months 881 of the games found have been sold on the internet to collectors, includng museums, in 14 countries.
The highest price paid was for a copy of ET The Extra-Terrestrial that went for $1,535.

More information at The Telegraph. Stories like this never fail to remind me that when I was young (the 1950s), my family used to take its trash to the local landfill. While there I would scramble around looking for discarded comic books. There must be an incredible number of comics and other collectible ephemera still in near-pristine condition in that anaerobic environment (which undoubtedly now has a subdivision of homes on top of it).

29 August 2015

The photos above were posted on Twitter by Gissur Simonarson. They depict Abdul, a single father with two children, and his daughter Reem, who is four. They are Palestinian Syrians from the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus. He is selling pens in an effort to support his family.

The photographer was swamped with offers to help the family, so he set up an Indiegogo account for them, which has now raised over $100,000 in 2 days.

28 August 2015

The rounded top of the board bore a painted 32-point compass pattern.
Each point featured a line of eight holes radiating from the center of a
circle. The lower, square portion of the board had horizontal lines of
holes under columns that represented the speed of the ship in knots.

During each standard four-hour watch, the crew measured the ship’s
speed and direction eight times, every half hour, and recorded
them using pegs: direction under the appropriate compass point on the
rounded top; speed along the bottom. After each watch, the navigator
collected the data, logged it, plotted it on a chart, cleared the board,
and then began the process again.

The boards were widely used throughout Europe and Scandinavia from the late 15th century until the mid-19th century.

Can you guess what the unusual formations are in this nanosatellite photo? (The area being imaged is the Myeongnyang Strait - if that helps...)

Which brings us to the subject of "nanosatellites" -

On Nov. 26, 2013, Planet Labs, a private start-up company of San
Francisco, CA, announced that it successfully launched its most recent
nanosatellites, Dove 3 and Dove 4, into orbit on a Dnepr vehicle (launch
on Nov. 21, 2013 from the Yasny Cosmodrome, Russia), completing a
series of four prototype nanosatellites in 2013. Those proved
successful, enabling the company to quickly follow up with the
production of a 28-member network. The launch of Planet Labs' "Flock 1" fleet of 28 nanosatellites in December/January, which will be the largest constellation of Earth-imaging satellites ever launched...

Their "Dove" nanosatellites are meant to be low-cost and rapidly
deployable, and capable of taking pictures of Earth that provide a
spatial resolution of 3-5 m. — On March 17, 2014, Planet Labs announced
that it has confirmed launches for more than 100 satellites over the
next 12 months. This full constellation of nanosatellites will allow
Planet Labs to image the entire Earth every day.

It's hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept that technology and data processing have progressed to the point that it is now possible to image the entire planet Earth every day at a resolution of a couple meters.

27 August 2015

If so, you may be eligible to participate in one of those class-action lawsuits where the claimants get a pittance and the attorneys get rich:

If you’re a resident of the United States and bought at least one
five-ounce can of any of these tunas from Starkist between February 19,
2009 and October 31, 2014, you’re eligible to file a claim...

As often happens with class actions for small items, they’re assuming
that you haven’t saved your last five years’ worth of grocery receipts.
They’re asking consumers to say on penalty of perjury when they file a
claim that they have, indeed, purchased tuna during the period covered
by the suit.

More details and a link to the website for submitting a claim at Consumerist.

25 August 2015

Bear, you see, is no ordinary dog. He's able to sniff out things that most people may not even realize have a scent... During a police raid on Fogle's home in July, investigators seized multiple smartphones, MP3 players, tablets, laptops, CDs, memory cards and drives. But there was one crucial piece of evidence that would have gone undiscovered if it weren't for Bear and his incredible sense of smell.
The dog, say prosecutors, was able to track down a flash drive Fogle had hidden that contained data important to the investigation.
As it turns out, the rambunctious black Lab is one of only four K9 units in the country who has been specially trained to detect the smell of electronic storage devices.
"Bear is unique because he can sniff out SD cards, thumb drives, external hard drives, iPads and micro SD cards..."

Republican support for Bernie Sanders is not quite the counterpart of Democrats cheering on Donald Trump. The latter phenomenon is readily understandable as a desire to see Trump wreak havoc in the Republican primary process.

Republicans for Bernie Sanders apparently are quite different - they seem to actually like him.

"Despite its reputation as a place filled with liberal hippies, Vermont,
like most of rural northern New England, is home to a lot of
conservatives... Anyone running for statewide office there needs to win these conservatives’ votes, and Bernie is great at doing that... And as NPR’s “Morning Edition” found out last year, some of Bernie’s biggest fans are in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the poorest and most conservative part of the state. It’s
people from the Northeast Kingdom who’ve overwhelmingly elected Bernie
to almost 20 years in Congress and two straight terms as senator..."

On a recent appearance on Lou Dobbs Tonight, Ann Coulder expressed the situation this way:

The rhino bull, after being rebuffed by the cows numerous times, made his way down to the water and near to the muddy patch the foal was stuck in. The rhino started to prod the zebra with his horn out of curiosity. After a while he grew impatient and lifted the body out. The foal, still being alive but very weak, could only lift its head out of the mud. The rhino lifted the foal so quickly that it had no time to react. The rhino then dropped the foal and moved off.

Bartlett and the 1715 Fleet Queens Jewels Salvage Crew counted more than
300 gold coins valued at four point five million dollars. The larger
coins-- called Royals-- tell an important story of the past. Royals
were specifically made for King Phillip V and are incredibly rare.
There were only 20 or so known to exist in the world before the crew
found these 9.

The photo is a screencap from the video at the link, which I've posted to show how close the treasure was to shore and that it was within walking distance of hotels further down the shore in Vero Beach.

And... two men claim to have found one of the legendary Nazi treasure trains. "...the train might hold up to 300 tons of gold... (but)...There are reasons to doubt the existence of this mythical gold filled Nazi train..." And if it does exist, there is a high probability that it is protected with land mines.

Fossil-hunters have found several extinct snakes with stunted hind legs, and modern boas and pythons still have a pair of little spurs. “But no snake has ever been found with four legs. This is a once-in-a-lifetime discovery.”

Martill called the creature Tetrapodophis: four-legged snake. “This little animal is the Archaeopteryx of the squamate world,” he says. (Squamates are the snakes and lizards.)

This finding has substantial implications regarding the evolution of snakes. More details at Ed Yong's incomparable Not Exactly Rocket Science blog at National Geographic.

Those who can’t resist reading a good book on
public transport have been rewarded by a city in Romania, which offered a
free bus ride to anyone who read a book during their journey...

Miron said that he wanted to “encourage more people to read on public transportation”... “I believe that it’s better to promote reading by rewarding those who
read, instead of criticising the ones who don’t,” said Miron...

18 August 2015

Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman perform The Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera.

Phantom began previews at Her Majesty's Theatre in London's West End on 27 September 1986 under the direction of Hal Prince, then opened on 9 October... Michael Crawford starred in the title role with Sarah Brightman as Christine and Steve Barton as Raoul. The production, still playing at Her Majesty's, celebrated its 10,000th performance on 23 October 2010, with Lloyd Webber and the original Phantom, Michael Crawford, in attendance. It is the second longest-running musical in West End (and world) history behind Les Misérables, and third overall behind The Mousetrap.

The conventional definition involves sentimental love, but the photo source also offers this comment:

The word also had homosexual connotations, as in Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Says old A. E. Housman to young A. E. Housman: “Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you’d find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Addendum: I originally posted this back in 2010. This week I encountered the photo again while browsing the web, and decided to search for more information on the unusual imagery. When I Googled several key words, the #1 hit was...

I have to admit that was a bit startling, especially since it was one of my favorite poems back when I was an English major in college (never could quite memorize it all, but I can still call up key passages). And the connection to the photo? - just the coincidental presence of the keywords I selected ("women," "spoons," "behind," and "back.")

So I'm going to use this serendipitous event as an excuse to post the poem.

When T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” made its first appearance in print 100 years ago, it did not in any way disturb the universe. Having languished in a drawer for four years, the poem was finally first published in the June 1915 issue of the Chicago journal Poetry, placed toward the back because the editor didn’t much like it... The reviews were a mix of indifference, confusion, and disdain. The Times Literary Supplement remarked that Eliot’s “observations” were “of the very smallest importance to anyone—even to himself.”...

Of course, it’s now clear that “Prufrock” is one of the great poems of
the twentieth century. It is widely taught in schools, and its strange
and subversive incantations are freely released into the unformed souls
of adolescents without any regard for the consequences...

The nature of Eliot’s personal hell during his time in Paris was
complicated and multifaceted, but the fact that he was still a virgin
was undoubtedly part of it. Eliot suffered from a congenital double
hernia, which meant he wore a truss from an early age. His cadaverous
bookishness and universally remarked-on shyness didn’t help his cause
with women at Harvard or anywhere else...

17 August 2015

Very cool. My maternal grandfather would have been awestruck to be able to use a piece of equipment like this in his cornfield (instead he had my aunts and uncles fan out through the field each spring to "pick potatoes.")

When I was growing up I never quite figured out why every year rocks would emerge at the surface of the fields. It wasn't until as a an adult when Michael Waters' Principles of Geoarchaeology that I finally understood how the dramatic freeze-thaw cycles of the Upper Midwest result in cryoturbation and "granular convection."

If you visit any old farm in Minnesota and Wisconsin and walk the fields, you will almost certainly see a pile of rocks off at the side - often under shade trees - where generations of a family have picked rocks and tossed them away from the tilled areas.

This incident didn't happen in a church school - she attends Woodford County High School, a public school in Versailles, Kentucky, just a short distance from where I used to live. The controversy regarding the dress code was recently reported by the Lexington Herald-Leader:

An online petition has begun seeking support to change Woodford County High School's 11-year-old dress code...

Wednesday was the first day of classes for students. One Facebook
post said there was "a group of female students standing in the office"
because they were not complying with the dress code.

Another post
said, "This is ridiculous! Parents are being called away from important
jobs and students are missing important class time because they are
showing their collarbones!"...

Among the criteria in the Woodford County High dress code is that
students must wear a rounded crewneck shirt or a button-down shirt that
may have only the top button open. Shirts must not expose the
collarbone. Shorts and skirts must be knee-length or longer.

The video above was posted at Neatorama several weeks ago. Today I found some explanatory text at Wikipedia:

The abacus system of mental calculation is a system where users mentally visualize an abacus to do calculations. No physical abacus is used; only the answers are written down. Calculations can be made at great speed in this way. For example, in the Flash Anzan event at the All Japan Soroban Championship, champion Takeo Sasano was able to add fifteen three-digit numbers in just 1.7 seconds.

This system is being propagated in China, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan and India. Mental calculation is said to improve mental capability, increases speed of response, memory power, and concentration power.

Many veteran and prolific abacus users in China, Japan, South Korea, and others who use the abacus daily, naturally tend to not use the abacus anymore but perform calculations by visualizing the abacus. This was verified when the right brain measured heightened EEG activity when calculating and compared with non-veterans who were using the abacus to perform calculations.

The technique demonstrated in the video seems to be quite different from the "finger math" using a mental abacus for counting.

... if that style consists of a lacy petticoat-like peplum cropped above the crotch.

Today I learn that a peplum has a long and respectable history in women's fashion:

Overskirts may serve various purposes, ranging from protecting the
underlying clothing from mud and dirt, to being purely a decorative
feature.

Overskirts first came into fashion during the Victorian Era
in 1867, after the pre-hoop and hoop periods of multiple petticoats and
crinoline, and before the bustle period... Early skirts were often looped up for walking, showing a pretty
petticoat underneath, which led to the introduction of the overskirt.

The term "peplum" originates with the ancient Greek peplos, a women's garment that had the same decorative detail as an overskirt.

A Google Image search shows a variety of attractive peplums, but also yielded this example of "flirty femininity" -

Glue board traps are trays coated with an extremely sticky adhesive.
They are often used for rat traps. Any animal that touches one of these
traps is immediately caught and immobilised, and physically stuck to the
board...

When the EAMTs arrived, Abby had already succumbed to exhaustion and was
collapsed face down in the glue and was struggling to breathe, with
glue lodged in her nasal passage and eyes...

Knowing that simply peeling the trap off of the small dog's face would
cause severe pain and could even rip out her fur and/or skin in the
process, Gallo tried a more humane and creative approach. He lathered
the little dog’s face with peanut butter and the peanut oil loosened the
glue's grip.

13 August 2015

Recently published, high-resolution scans of the walls of room J (the Burial Chamber) of Valley of the Kings tomb KV 62 (Tutankhamun) reveal, beneath the plastered surfaces of the painted scenes, distinct linear traces. These are here mapped, discussed, and tentatively identified as the "ghosts" of two hitherto unrecognized doorways. It is argued that these doorways give access to: (1) a still unexplored storage chamber on the west of room J, seemingly contemporary with the stocking of Tutankhamun's burial; and (2) a pre-Tutankhamun continuation of KV 62 towards the north, containing the undisturbed burial of the tomb's original owner -- Nefertiti.

From the text:

It begins to look as if Egyptology's traditional reading of KV 62 as a small, private tomb subsequently enlarged to four chambers for Tutankhamun's exclusive use has been very much in error. Rather, the indications are that what we now know as KV 62 represents merely
the outermost portion
of an extended, corridor-style "tomb-within-a-tomb" -- a considerably larger entity than previously understood, containing sequential burials of (1) an earlier queen who, by her employment of a nest of large sepulchral shrines had achieved full pharaonic status, and (2) a later male king, Tutankhamun himself, each interred within her (innermost) and his (outermost) dedicated burial apartments.

Much more at the quite interesting original publication, including images of the suspicious walls.

"Now, about the tomb of Nefertiti," [Omm Sety] continued, sounding a bit hesitant. "I did once ask His Majesty where it was, and he told me. He said, "Why do you want to know?" I said I would like to have it excavated, and he said, "No, you must not. We don't want anything more of this family known." But he
did
tell me where it was, and I can tell you this much. It's in the Valley of the Kings, and it's quite near to the Tutankhamun tomb. But it's in a place where nobody would ever think of looking for it," she laughed. "And apparently it is still intact..." -- el Zeini and Dees 2007, 265-266

The word came up during a dinner conversation the other night. It brought to mind the penname ("Cordwainer Smith") of the famous Wisconsin-born science fiction writer Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, but I didn't know the term referred to the occupation of leatherworking.

Cordwainer is the English term for a shoemaker
who makes shoes from new leather. The word is derived from "cordwain",
or "cordovan", the leather historically produced in Moorish Córdoba, Spain
in the middle ages. Medieval cordovan leather was used for the highest
quality shoes, but English cordwainers also used domestically produced
leathers and were not solely producers of luxury footwear.

The terms cordwainer and cobbler are not interchangeable. A cordwainer is someone who makes new shoes using new leather, and a cobbler is someone who repairs shoes. In the historic London guild system the cobblers and cordwainers were separate guilds, and the cobblers were forbidden from working in new leather. Historically cobblers also made shoes but only using old leather recovered from discarded or repaired shoes

You're a teaser, you turn 'em on -
Leave them burning and then you're gone.
Looking out for another, anyone will do
You're in the mood for a dance,
And when you get the chance...

You are the Dancing Queen, young and sweet, only seventeen.
Dancing Queen, feel the beat from the tambourine.
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life.
See that girl, watch that scene, digging the Dancing Queen...

It's hard to believe this song is 40 years old.

"Dancing Queen" is a pop song recorded by Swedish pop group ABBA. It was released in August 1976, and is commonly regarded as one of the most successful singles of the 1970s. In 2011, Rolling Stone magazine listed it as one of the greatest songs of all time...

The recording sessions for "Dancing Queen" began on 4 August 1975... After having been premiered on German and Japanese TV during the spring of 1976, "Dancing Queen" saw its first live and domestic performance, televised on Swedish TV on 18 June 1976, during an all-star gala staged by Kjerstin Dellert at the Royal Swedish Opera in honour of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden and his bride to be, Silvia Sommerlath, who were to be married the next day...

"Dancing Queen" became a massive worldwide hit, topping the charts in more than a dozen countries including ABBA's native Sweden (where it spent 14 weeks at the top), Australia, Belgium, Brazil, West Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Mexico,[citation needed] the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway (where it charted for 32 weeks (VG-lista Top 10), making it the 11th best-performing single of all time in that country), South Africa and Rhodesia. "Dancing Queen" also topped the charts in the United States, ABBA's only #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and was a Top 5 hit in Austria, Canada, Finland, France and Switzerland.

Several brief excerpts from Woman of the Boundary Waters, an autobiography by Justine Kerfoot, who moved to the Gunflint Trail in 1928 with her family and lived there for 50 years, setting up the famous Gunflint Lodge:

Invariably our loose dogs encountered porcupines, which always presented a challenge to them... The only effective method I found to remove quills was stringing the dog's hindquarters to the rafters, but low enough so the shoulders were on the floor, placing a stick through the dog's mouth for it to clamp down on and pulling out the quills one by one with pliers. If the dog's hindquarters weren't lifted off the floor, there was no way of holding him steady."(p.38)

"The [telephone] line was as frail as a gossamer thread. It became customary when traveling up and
down the Trail to watch for fallen trees on the line and stop to chop them or push them off. We caried spare wire, pliers and an axe in our car at all times...

The first resorter to come along always patched a break. To pull the wire ends together we hooked one end of the wire to the bumper of our car and drove ahead to stretch that side taut. Then we would drag the other end by hand as close as we could to the attached end and fill the remaining gap with a wire splice. Later we would return with come-a-longs, sleeves, crimpers and a ladder to replace the makeshift patch and retie the line to the insulators... (p. 94)

Our 50-mile single circuit telephone line became efficient when everything was frozen during the winter months. Once when Mother and I were coming back from town we found a break. We had no wire along, so we filled the gap with an old tire chain. The chain transmitted messages, both local and long distance for several weeks until we repaired the break. (p.97)

10 August 2015

The cloth produced from these filaments can be woven even finer than silk, and is extremely light and warm; however, it attracts clothes moths, the larvae of which will eat it. It was said that a pair of women's gloves made from the fabric could fit into half a walnut shell.

Wisconsin is sadly a long way from the ocean; I had a hard time visualizing the "filaments" by which molluscs attach themselves to rocks (I thought they just glued themselves on...). This image - cropped for emphasis from the original - helped:

The byssus is the tuft of filaments at the far left of the mollusk.

There are still a few remaining craftsmen who weave byssus into cloth:

I was ready to meet Chiara Vigo, the only woman in the world who still
works the byssus, better known as the silk of the sea, the same way
women in ancient Mesopotamia used to weave it... The lab where Chiara works is also the only Museum of the Byssus in the
world, and it sits on top of a little hill in downtown Sant’Antioco.

Once dry, Chiara combs it with a wool card and finally twists the fine
filaments together with a spindle made of oleander, forming the gilded
thread. The yarn is spun quite a few times in order to make it strong
enough to be employed in the loom and woven with her slender fingers.

On July 9th, 2015 a group of lucky divers happened upon something truly
remarkable–A 4-meter-wide clear sphere floating off the coast of a small
town in Turkey. The sphere was 22 meters below the sea surface, and
even up close, it appears almost invisible.

These egg masses are likely found much deeper in the ocean and only
occasionally drift to shallow water. Another factor is time. Dr. Staaf
and colleagues found that the developing squid in the giant mass took
just three days to hatch. That’s a pretty small window to find such a well-hidden target.

09 August 2015

The gunfight was reported two weeks after the census was released
revealing that the number of the Sundarban’s famous Bengal Tiger
population was far fewer than it was previously thought, sparking an
uproar among environmentalists, who demanded intensified anti-poaching
campaigns.

08 August 2015

A medieval sword that carries a mysterious inscription has baffled historians for centuries.
Little is known about [the] double-edged weapon, least of all the meaning behind a cryptic 18-letter message running down the central groove which reads: NDXOXCHWDRGHDXORVI.

Now The British Library have appealed for the public’s help in cracking the conundrum...

The indecipherable inscription is inlaid with gold wire and experts have speculated the letters are a religious invocation since the language is unknown...

Anne Robertson reckons the letters may be the first from each line of a poem – something that’s been seen on other medieval artefacts.
A number of people have picked out certain letters which had particular meanings in Latin at the time, such as ND standing for ‘nostrum dominus’ meaning our Lord, and ‘X’ for Christ.
Harrison thinks this is the most probable idea so far 'but then it gets more complicated'.
'It's been suggested in the past that it's a relgious inscription and the sword may have been dropped in the river on purpose [for religious reasons] which was not uncommon...'

More details, pix and a video at the link. I should probably carve TYWKIWDBI on something...

07 August 2015

Josh Cyganik has waved to 75-year-old Leonard Bullock every morning for the past four years.

Bullock's house sits across the street from a
portion of the Union Pacific main line in Pendleton, Oregon, where
Cyganik meets his co-workers every day to begin his work maintaining
tracks across UP's western region. "He sits on that front porch all day
long," Cyganik said. "I never talked to him. Not until I heard what
those two kids said."

It was a sunny day in July when Josh overheard
two teenagers comment that the house should be burned down because it
was in such bad shape. "I saw the look on Leonard's face. I could tell
the comment bothered him," Cyganik said. "I don't think any elderly
person should have to endure what I heard from those two kids' mouths. I
kind of stewed about it for a couple days before I decided to do
something."

Determined to right the situation, Cyganik asked a few fellow
railroaders to help out. He also asked his friend, Brian Christensen,
manager of Tum-a-Lum lumber, if he could donate some paint. "Brian was
more than happy to donate supplies. After we had it all figured out, I
went and asked Leonard if it would be all right if we painted his
house," Cyganik said. "He was ecstatic."

He posted his project on Facebook, and more than a hundred people stopped by to help.

"It was just a good vibe! Everybody was happy and excited," Cyganik
said. "We received a lot of additional donations from people who didn't
come but wanted to help. People were dropping off food and drinks all
day long. Starbucks even donated six gallons of water and iced tea."

The formerly white, blue and turquoise house now is a uniform warm
beige, and thanks to more help from Tum-a-Lum Lumber, construction of a
new porch is underway. Additional volunteers have purchased new outdoor
furniture, and Cyganik and crew are looking for a roofer willing to
donate time to complete the project.

Throughout this process, Cyganik learned quite a bit about Leonard
Bullock. Bullock is a retired forklift driver. He met his wife, Dorothy,
at a church in Walla Walla, Washington. They married in 2000. Bullock
retired in 1995, but even with his monthly stipend he and Dorothy didn't
have the funds to fix up their house. "They're great people," Cyganik
said. "You never know about someone unless you get to know their
struggles.

More details at the link. Commentary at Reddit. Those readers who have grown weary of the unending grim news they encounter exploring the internet will be relieved to know that there is an Uplifting News subreddit.

06 August 2015

A Stockbridge damper is a tuned mass damper used to suppress wind-induced vibrations on slender structures such as overhead power lines and long cantilevered signs. The dumbbell-shaped device consists of two masses at the ends of a short length of cable or flexible rod, which is clamped at its middle to the main cable. The damper is designed to dissipate the energy of oscillations in the main cable to an acceptable level. Its distinctive shape gives it the nickname "dog-bone damper".

I've posted before that I love reading conspiracy theories, because they are so much more interesting than real life. A recent Reddit thread presented some new (to me) theories:

That the government started the whole tin-foil hat idea because tin foil hats actually amplify, not block, signals.

Michael Jordan did not "retire" from basketball to play baseball for a couple of years. He was suspended by the commissioner for gambling on the sport, but they mutually agreed to not announce it because he was the game's biggest star, and it didn't do either of them any good to expose him.

New Coke was a maneuver by Coca Cola to reinvigorate their sales by introducing a subpar product and then reintroducing "Coke Classic" to inspire nostalgia. Or it was a clever method to hide the switch from sugar to corn syrup.

That PETA is run by someone in the meat industry to paint animal rights activists as crazy people.
They release massive campaigns over ridiculous topics to draw attention
away from real issues and make real activists less credible.

Lost cosmonauts. The Russians lost men in space. Gagarin was just the first to return.

That laundry detergent companies put the line over where it needs to be so you'll run out faster.

Magic Johnson never had AIDS. He was paid by the government and insurance companies to say he had aids since he was the height of invincibility and admiration of youngsters at the time.

“Everybody thinks we’re cold-hearted killers and it’s not that,”
Corgatelli said in the nationally televised interview. “There is a
connection to the animal and just because we hunt them doesn’t mean we
don’t have a respect for them.

“Giraffes are very dangerous animals. They could hurt you seriously, very quickly.”

One of my first garden chores this spring was to tidy up a flower bed near the front door. Last year a birch tree cluster had begun to shadow the bed, so on Monday I pruned a few branches, then sat down to clear some of the detritus of dead material from the flowerbed. Several minutes later, I noticed that a liquid was dripping down onto the area where I was working. I looked up to see sap dripping from several of the pruned birch branches.

Several years ago I would have thought no more about it except to view the oozing as a fortuitous feast for any early-emerging Mourning Cloak butterflies. But two years ago I wrote a post about the drinking of birch tree juice in Russia, and just last month posted a photo of a "sugar-sickle" (frozen dripping tree sap).

I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I used rubber bands to secure sandwich-sized Ziploc bags on the two clipped branches. By the time I had finished gardening that afternoon, the bag (shown above) had accumulated quite a bit of liquid, and to my surprise it was beautifully clear:

I suppose I had expected some coloration or cloudiness. When I came out Tuesday morning, I was startled to find both bags substantially distended with birch sap. It was now impossible to unwind the rubber band, so I brought out a scissors, intending to snip it, then decided it would make more sense to snip a small hole in the Ziploc bag to drain the fluid. Placing a hole at the top of the bag allowed me

to tip the bag's contents into a container and then leave the bag on the branch to accumulate more fluid.

Birch syrup is one of the few taste treats unique to Alaska and the circumpolar region. Although many people have never heard of it, birch syrup is not new. Birch trees, like many northern hardwoods, have long been tapped for their sugary, invigorating sap; but because of maple's high sugar content, generous sap flow, mellow flavor, and compliant nature, maple became the premier sugar tree in North America - except for Alaska, where birch trees are plentiful and maples are small and scarce. Birch syrup would have been the only springtime sugar source for Alaska sourdoughs in remote areas. For every gallon of birch syrup he made, the sourdough would have tapped no fewer than a hundred trees, collected more than one hundred gallons of sap, and burned nearly a cord of wood. Folklore relates that the syrup boiled down in open pans was tart, robust, and very dark, but the sourdough must have guarded and savored every drop. Neither did he have to worry much about spoilage, since pure, thick birch syrup seems incorruptible...

There is an outstanding amount of information at that link on the science of birch sap and the techniques for its harvest and for protecting the trees, and the subtleties of rendering it down to a syrupy consistency.

I haven't decided yet whether to undertake that aspect of the adventure. Everything I've read suggests the process is time-consuming and needs to be undertaken with some degree of care to avoid scorching the concentrate. I have about a half-liter of fluid now, because the trees are still dripping into this third day (memo to self: in the future don't prune when the sap is running). That half-liter would be worth about 25 Euros in the Japanese market, so rather than waste it I decided to have some last night with my dinner.

I had a small glass of birch sap with my takeout Chinese food dinner last night. It tastes pretty much like very fresh water, with maybe just a subtle hint of earthy overtones. It goes well with General Tso's Chicken.

Reposted from 2011 because Modern Farmer has a report on how entrepreneurs are trying to commercialize "tree water" rather than rendering it into syrup:

A new wave of maple entrepreneurs
are skipping the laborious syrup boiling process—where sap is reduced
to 1/40th of its original volume to create the beloved pancake
dressing—and marketing the pure watery sap as a health drink instead.
The first maple water companies emerged over the last few years in
Canada, but the idea has now infiltrated the American market. The drink
is primarily found in health food stores in New England, but
distribution is ramping up and this year’s maple water harvest should
hit stores across the country in the coming months...

It’s always been common knowledge among maple syrup producers that
taking a sip of sap was a good way to quench their thirst while working
in the sugarbush, but apparently the notion that it could be a
marketable substance is a new one. The first impression after downing a
glass of maple water is that it tastes like water, but with a slightly
sweet aftertaste and a tiny hint of earthy, maple syrup-like flavor.

With coco water (and other flavored waters) selling for $4 a pop,
it’s a wonder that no one thought of bottling maple water sooner. It’s
all-natural, sustainably-produced, vegan, gluten-free, non-GMO, paleo
and local...

Between the U.S. and Canada, at least 11 different companies are
marketing the drink so far. All of them are recent startups, sporting
catchy names like Vertical Water, Wahta, Happy Tree and Sap on Tap.

Reposted August 2015 after reading an article in the Belfast Telegraph about water menus at luxury hotels.

The five-star Merchant Hotel has been home to the world's most
expensive cocktail and now it has turned its attention to water by
launching Ireland's first dedicated water menu. This summer will see the hotel will launch its new water menu with an exclusive range of 13 bottled waters.

The handpicked selection has been curated to include some of the
world’s purest waters, with bottles originating from 10 countries
including Italy, Iceland, Finland, the Faroe Islands and Fiji. Prices
start from £4.95 and go right up to £26.45 per bottle with a
description of the water and its mineral content guiding guests through
the options available.

And to keep customers right - the Merchant
has also appointed two new water butlers that can help guests choose the
water that is right for their palate - by explaining the unique
benefits, tastes and attributes of the different brands - many of which
can be rarely found in the UK and Ireland.

More details at the link, but this item caught my eye:

De l’Aubier Maple Sap Water: Canada - £15.50 750ml BtlThis
is the only water of its kind in the world. A still water of vegetal
origin made from maple sap. Through the biological phenomenon of
osmosis, it rises to the tree’s branches during the night and flows back
to the roots during the day. TDS 260mg - Sodium 2mg - Magnesium 2mg - Calcium 2mg.

"The only water of its kind in the world." Hmmm......

Addendum: The glass on the right shows what my birch water looked like after I boiled it down in a pan on the stove:

The process did concentrate and intensify the flavor, but frankly it wasn't worth it in terms of my time and the carbon footprint energy expenditure involved.

"Tai-wiki-widbee" is an eclectic mix of trivialities, ephemera, curiosities, and exotica with a smattering of current events, social commentary, science, history, English language and literature, videos, and humor. We try to be the cyberequivalent of a Victorian cabinet of curiosities.

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